It's only been out for one weekend, but you've probably — like most of the world — seen "The LEGO Movie" multiple times. But did you catch all the Easter Eggs and plot points that zip by during the non-stop speedy dialogue and action? Here are some of our favorite blink-and-you-miss-it moments. And spoilers on, of course: "Eight And A Half Years Later" Right at the top of the movie, after Lord Business (Will Ferrell) and Vitruvius (Morgan Freeman) battle for possession of the all-powerful Kragle, we cut to a title screen that says, "Eight And A Half Years Later." While this is a nice preview of the running "very specific time frame" joke throughout the movie, it's also way more important to the plot. That's because Finn (Jadon Sand), the kid who ultimately turns out to be playing with the LEGOs in the movie is eight and a half years old. So though it's never explicitly stated, when Finn was born, The Man Upstairs locked his toys away, separated the worlds and made sure that his son would never play with them.
Given the poignant ending, this is yet another beautiful, emotional detail that adds to the richness of the film. Batman, Superman, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman all get their time to shine in the movie, but there is one other DC Comics superhero gets his big screen debut. That would be the Flash, seen during Metal Beard's flashback to the Master Builders' initial assault on Lord Business' stronghold. He doesn't get any lines, so hopefully we'll get to see more of the speedster in the sequel. When Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) and Emmet (Chris Pratt) visit The Old West, you can hear a plinky, olde timey Western version of "Everything Is Awesome" playing in the bar. One of the biggest cameos in the movie has to be when the Millennium Falcon shows up unexpectedly next to our heroes' pirate ship. Though they weren't able to get Harrison Ford back as Han Solo (he's voiced by Keith Ferguson, who's done various Ford characters on "Robot Chicken"), they did manage to snag Billy Dee Williams for Lando, and Anthony Daniels for C-3P0.
It's surprising that the Warner Brothers movie managed to get Disney's talent, but the long relationship between LEGO and Lucasfilm makes the whole thing a little more understandable. And super freakin' awesome. Another big screen reunion, Channing Tatum plays Superman and Jonah Hill plays Green Lantern, reprising their partnership from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller's "21 Jump Street." The team will once again reunite on "22 Jump Street," though out of their superhero costumes. When Vitruvius runs down all the worlds Lord Business has tried to lock down, he mentions there's a bunch we don't care about. One that quickly flashes on screen is Bioncile, a LEGO line that ran from 2001-2010 with a deep, complicated back-story of its own. Though this may have been a joke at the expense of some of the brick-maker's failed toys, it's also an indication of places the story could go in the sequel. What's With All The Croissants? One of the more knowing jokes in the movie finds Emmet's "friends" talking about what makes them all different, which includes eating croissants, and loving turkey drumsticks.
The reason behind this is that LEGO has a few generic foods that fit right into mini-figs hands. Croissants actually show up in over 30 different LEGO sets, while turkey drumsticks are in well over 50. Probably the only item more popular is carrots, which show up over 60 times. Here's one we actually missed, but according to Deadline there's a shout-out to Jeffrey Robinov. The legendary studio head was working at Warner Brothers and greenlit "The LEGO Movie," before abruptly leaving the company. Perhaps he's mentioned on one of the many, many billboards in Brickington at the beginning of the movie? We'll just have to go watch the movie a few more times to find out... "The LEGO Movie" is currently in theaters. The Lego Batman Movie works precisely because it knows audiences are sick of its hero. It's a reassessment, an intervention, an effort to try and remember what's fun about him. February 15, 2017 | The sequel of sorts... is not quite as good, but at its best, it has the same whiplash wit and inspired freneticism.
February 10, 2017 | The thing about a sequel or a spinoff, even a mostly fun one like The LEGO Batman Movie, is that it's hard to recreate enthusiasm and inventiveness. What was once new is now, already, routine. Overall, The Lego Batman Movie offers enough action and silliness to enthrall children while providing sufficient pop culture and Batman-through-the-years references to keep adults entertained. Basically, it's a standard-issue Batman narrative - arguably better than 50 per cent of history's other Batman films - that just happens to take place in a Lego-fied world. It's the Bat-spoof we didn't know we needed and it gives Batman a chance to loosen up. Sign In or Join to save for later Genre: Family and Kids Running Time: 100 minutes What parents need to know Parents Need to Know LEGO Batman: The Movie -- DC Superheroes Unite LEGO: The Adventures of Clutch Powers LEGO Ninjago: Masters of Spinjitzu Top advice and articles
What parents and kids say Running Time: 104 minutes Lego DC Comics: Batman Be-LeagueredThe Joker posed that question in “The Dark Knight,” and even in the context of the greatest (and the most serious) of all Batman movies, it carried the unmistakable sting of a self-critique. If there was anyone who could stand to lighten up a bit, it was surely the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, who gave us a masked superhero so heavy with existential doom-and-gloom, even some of his admirers couldn’t help but wonder when the fun was going to start.You never wonder in “The Lego Batman Movie,” an impish, big-hearted parody that also happens to be the best Batman movie since “The Dark Knight” in 2008. That may not sound like high praise coming so soon after “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but it’s no small accomplishment when the latest contribution to our collective superhero fatigue instead reveals itself as a possible cure — or a tonic, at the very least.
In its best moments, this gag-a-minute Bat-roast serves as a reminder that, in the right hands, a sharp comic scalpel can be an instrument of revelation as well as ridicule. That’s true even when Gotham City is a brilliantly hued wonderland assembled from miniature plastic bricks and presided over by a Batman who looks like a raw cocktail weenie garnished with cape and cowl — an impression that doesn’t really change when he opens his mouth. You probably remember this Batman (hilariously played by Will Arnett in a voice so gravelly, he must have been coughing up rocks for weeks afterward) from his scene-stealing appearance in “The Lego Movie.” That 2014 hit ably demonstrated that, the “Transformers” movies be damned, a popular toy line could serve as the building blocks of a wickedly sophisticated popular entertainment, and that the causes of good moviemaking and effective merchandising need not always be at cross-purposes.Partly because it enters theaters facing high expectations — and partly because the earlier Lego film’s inspired writer-directors, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, are back in strictly a producing role this time — “The Lego Batman Movie” doesn’t sustain its creative lunacy as consistently as its predecessor did.
The focus on a well-known comic-book mythology forces even the script’s cleverest jokes into a narrower, more homogeneous register, and not even Batman’s love of angry, brooding hip-hop (listen closely and you’ll hear a riff on Neal Hefti’s original 1960s TV theme) can hide the absence of a song as catchy as “Everything Is Awesome.”Still, if not everything is awesome this time around, much of it comes appreciably close — especially in the giddy first half-hour, which gleefully spoofs every live-action Batman movie ever made while briskly dispensing with some of the origin story’s familiar beats.Rather than replaying the tragic loss that set Bruce Wayne on his vigilante path, the movie gives a melancholy nod to a portrait of his parents (who are shown posing right next to “Crime Alley”). And rather than climaxing with a tortured disquisition on the duality of heroes and villains, the script includes an early, knife-twisting breakup scene in which the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) is heartbroken to learn that Batman doesn’t even consider him his “greatest enemy.”
Truth is, this Batman doesn’t really consider much apart from his fame, his wealth, his solitude and his fragile yet overinflated ego. This has perhaps always been true of the character, his do-gooder streak notwithstanding, but “The Lego Batman Movie” is the first Batman movie I can recall that really grasps the character’s all-consuming narcissism — and proves willing to call him out rather than coddle him for it. To that end, the busy, eye-popping action sequences are sandwiched between regular interventions by the key supporting cast, which includes the loyal Alfred (Ralph Fiennes), showing more spine and fighting moves than the past several Alfreds combined, and the new Gotham City police commissioner, Barbara Gordon (Rosario Dawson), who refuses to follow her dad’s policy of hitting the Bat-signal at every moment of crisis. And of course, there’s Robin (squeakily voiced by Michael Cera), the alter ego of Bruce’s eager-to-please, accidentally adopted son, Dick Grayson, who can strip down to his costume so deftly, he’d be a shoo-in for the Lego Chippendales.Together, Lego Batman and Lego Robin are more than merely a thumb-sized rehash of a classic hero-and-sidekick duo.
Think of them as two very different behavioral models for the pint-sized Lego player: Robin is the delighted kid whose wide eyes can scarcely take in this lavish new playground while Batman is the spoiled, preening master of his domain, the one who warns his friends not to touch any of his toys and clearly never learned the importance of sharing.In this way, “The Lego Batman Movie” offers a less conceptually daring version of the framing device in “The Lego Movie,” in which every inspired flight of fancy turned out to be grounded in a real sense of child’s play. If anything, first-time feature director Chris McKay (who previously worked on “The Lego Movie” and Cartoon Network’s “Robot Chicken”) pushes the brick-by-brick world building to even more inventive extremes: It’s dazzling, if a tad exhausting, to see how a few thousand toy pieces and a herky-jerky stop-motion aesthetic can effectively simulate an exploding fireball or an icy blast from Mr. Freeze’s ray gun.Mr. Freeze isn’t the only old-school Batman villain to make an appearance;
there are also brief appearances by Two-Face, Clayface, Poison Ivy, Bane and even the Condiment King. And because the Lego universe is one of relentless cross-branding and mash-up merchandising, Gotham City is soon invaded by a host of other supervillains who conveniently fall under the Warner Bros. umbrella, including Lord Voldemort, King Kong and the Eye of Sauron. Not that corporate synergy isn’t thrilling and all, but it’s here that the movie’s gleeful sendup of the entertainment-industrial complex begins to wear a bit thin — right around the point when a Wicked Witch turns up with her winged monkeys but no Winkies or Munchkins in tow.Or should I say Mnunchkins? One of the executive producers of “The Lego Batman Movie” is secretary of the Treasury nominee and Donald Trump presidential campaign supporter Steven Mnuchin — all of which casts a fascinating new light on a movie about a billionaire playboy megalomaniac who dwells in an impregnable fortress, undermines his closest allies and has to be reminded, repeatedly, that not everything is about him.